Welcome to Johannes-Secker.co.uk

I grew up in the Netherlands as the son of a joiner and cabinet maker and was initiated into fine woodwork at an early age. I pursued woodworking even when I was an academic. When I arrived at university, having left school at 13, I was so enthralled with learning and with the freedom to pursue learning, that I 'fell into' the academic way of life and eventually obtained a doctorate in Old English and taught for some 10 years, only to find in my late 30s that my 'hands' were, after all, better than my 'head'!

I retrained as a harpsichord maker at the London College of Furniture (1977-80), as it then was, where I was tutored by the likes of David Law, and for a brief period Andrew Garrett and Chris Nobbs. I spent a further year (1984-85) as a Canada Council Fellow researching and drawing original instruments on the continent and in the UK.

I established myself as a Harpsichord Maker in 1980 in western Canada, in the Calgary area, making Harpsichords, Virginals, Spinets and Clavichords. In the late 1980s at the request of the University of Calgary I built a Viennese Fortepiano for the 1989 International Symposium, "Music and Science in the Age of Galileo", where is was given its first performance, to great acclaim, by Paul Badura-Skoda. It was featured again, 2 years later, 1991, at a conference at the University of Calgary, dedicated to the music of Mozart. I have since pursued this area of expertise with considerable enthusiasm and added the Fortepiano to my repertiore.